Guggenheim Museum - Exhibitions - Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History Bodegones Unlike the French phrase nature morte (literally "dead nature") or the term "still life," which is its closest equivalent in English, the Spanish term bodegón does not imply death or immobilization, but instead relates to the pantry, or bodega, where the objects pictured in these canvases were commonly kept. And like that space, the traditional bodegón was infused with humility and a sense of the everyday, though as the genre emerged during the Counter-Reformation, these qualities were often coupled with a profoundly transcendental value. In works by pioneers of the genre such as Juan Sánchez Cotán, humble fruits, vegetables, or baked goods are set against an inky black background, enabling sensations of spatial timelessness to intersect with the contradictory impressions of temporal brevity aroused by objects whose precise and minutely described materiality seems to transform them into dramatic reminders of the transience of beauty or the notion of perishability.

This tension distinguishes the Spanish bodegón from the sumptuous spreads of the kitchen tables of Flanders, or the expressive burlesque of the figures appearing in Italian pictures of the same time. Sánchez Cotán and followers such as Francisco de Zurbarán composed their still lifes with a formal rigor that approached the rationality of mathematical law. This tendency helped them to justify their work in a genre that was not yet fully accepted by the artistic community, but their application of the most complex scientific laws of proportion, order, and perspective also adhered to an almost religious interest in geometry as a timeless or immortal aspect of the natural world. This rigid, crystalline quality contrasts with the more universally recognized expressive constant of historic Spanish aesthetic tastes, and reaches across time to Cubism, serving as an important precedent for the fragmented style of Juan Gris in particular. In his canvases, as in much of the early Cubist work of Pablo Picasso, the transcendent geometries of the 17th century take on a modern, wholly secular character, updated to a new cultural moment but still constituting an inescapable historical model.

Project MUSE - Still Life: Theory and Practice Theory and Practice Lois Baer Barr (bio) The Beauty of Still Life Is not having to ask the model to sit still or having to replicate her pug nose, muscular arms, the improbable red of her hair or even pay her. The only thing eggplants do like models is smoke when you roast them in olive oil and salt (the eggplants, of course). The Beauty of Still Life II No mosquitoes, no wind, no sudden torrents when you pack your paints and run. Still Life and Bugs Flies in the paintings of Louise Moillon (1610-1696) are discreet, and I can see that moths represent transformation and ants, hard work. I still don’t want them in my kitchen or my paintings. Still Life from Cubism to Pop Günter Salzmann says Picasso and Braque used inanimate objects to declare their independence as painters, while Warhol and Lichtenstein showed everyday objects in a new light. Anselm Kiefer painted “Still Life is Exciting” on his 1976 painting of a potted geranium. Irony?

To me, the still lifes of [End Page 84] Cotán, Caravaggio and Picasso are exciting, and the most exciting thing about Kiefer’s piece is that it looks like he had as much trouble rendering geranium leaves as I do. Still Life for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Take the crown jewels, pry loose the stones, and scatter them on a mountain of garbage in Bangladesh. -Wait a minute, isn’t still life apolitical? Still Lifes of Breakfast -Portraits of glum faces staring into coffee mugs? No, there usually are not portraits in still lifes. I meant the Dutch proclivity to paint the panoply of cheeses, dried meats, and fruits they serve at breakfast. These still lifes are called ontbijt. In our kitchen most mornings, you’ll find a veggie omelet, some ketchup heated in the microwave, and coffee. In winter, maybe cheese grits and in summer, berries. No silver pitchers, exotic spices, crystal goblets, or fine porcelain. Still Leven The Dutch coined the term that still life comes from, still leven—still or motionless model.

Following the Dutch, the Spaniards called their compositions naturaleza muerta, and the French followed suit with nature morte. [End Page 85] -So, you could go to Syria and paint dead bodies on the streets? -No, as I said, still life isn’t political, and you can paint at home in the safety of your studio. Still Life and Revolution In 1962 Andy Warhol shocked the art world by painting 32 cans of Campbell’s soup. But did he ever paint an elderly couple opening a can of cat food for dinner? Oops, politics. Bodegón or the Imitation of Nature A lay friar, the Spaniard Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560–1627) painted lemons, cabbage, thistle, and game birds suspended from strings on a darkened window sill. No doubt the birds’ stiff little limbs gave rise to the Spanish euphemism for death, quedarse pajarito, to be stiff as a bird. In Cotán’s paintings everything is at eye level looking so real you want to grab the duck, pluck its feathers and cook it in orange sauce.

The French call that trompe l’oeil, and many say that the challenge of imitating nature was the origin of still life. Ancient Greek painters bragged they could paint things to look more lifelike than nature, especially Zeuxis, when a bird came and pecked at his rendering of grapes. I don’t want to brag, but once a fly did buzz around my watercolor of strawberries. Think how many eyes you fool when you fool a fly. [End Page 86] Still Life of Fruit Yummy. Grapes are great after hours of painting. Unless you are a consummate painter like Austrian master Carl Schuch (1846-1903) or Paul Cézanne, avoid painting apples with bruises. Your friends will wrinkle their noses and ask, “What were you trying to paint?” Still Life and Family Although Antonio López García had a studio in the basement of his home in Madrid, his work spilled over to the rest of the house. He has spent hours, days, sometimes years on his still life projects. He painted his open refrigerators, both an old icebox (1966) and a new refrigerator (1991).

In “Regarding Antonio López, My Father,” his daughter María López Moreno writes that he kept the same food on the dining room table for weeks at a time. At some point he had to make a plaster cast of the chicken, and he kept a cloth spread over the plates and food to keep them from getting dusty. Family meals were relegated to the kitchen. María was fascinated with the skinned rabbit her father kept freezing and defrosting. She remembers seeing “plaster casts of pumpkins, pomegranates, quinces” in their attic. She never complains about having the dining room table covered with food they couldn’t eat. The odor of decomposing foodstuffs and turpentine must have become normal. At some point foreign visitors and exhibitions made up for the embarrassment she felt at school at having to say her father was a painter. [End Page 87] Still Life and Bugs II I’ve already said I wouldn’t paint bugs, but sixteenth century Moravian painter Georg Flegel (1556-1638) always put critters in his paintings. In one there’s a bird perched atop a bowl of peaches, her long beak ready to pierce the tender fruit.

Surveying the porcelain bowls of berries, you note that huddled between a blush red apple and a plate of snails is a little brown mouse nibbling at peas in a pod, and on closer inspection there is a lady bug heading toward the apricots and a slender gray moth perched on a pear and, oh dear, what seemed like the shadow of a hazelnut is a cockroach! The stuff of nightmares, but tailor made for a children’s art tour. Still Life and Symbolism When Dutch Protestant church fathers forbade religious images, the artists painted bread, wine, and lilies to encode sacred messages. -Could a Seder plate be a still life? -It could. With the chopped apples and nuts to represent mortar for building the pyramids, the roasted egg symbolizing rebirth, the bitter herbs … -Hey, don’t forget the orange for women rabbis and the tomato for farm workers’ rights. -Politics again? [End Page 88] Still Life and Disappointment When Luis Meléndez (1715-1780) painted his self portrait in 1746, he was certain he had a brilliant career before him.

He had won first place on his entrance exam to the academy recently founded in Madrid by the Bourbon monarch Fernando VI, and Luis’s father, Francisco Antonio Meléndez, was the school’s director of painting. After Luis lost an important competition for study in Italy, his father wrote a critique of the director of the academy. He asked his son to hand deliver the scathing missive. The elder Meléndez lost his post, and Luis was expelled. Then Francisco Antonio sent his son to study painting in Rome. On a return trip to Madrid, Luis stopped in Naples to offer the gift of a portrait to Fernando VI’s son Carlos, the fledgling king of Naples and Sicily. He hoped to garner favor with the man who would ascend to the throne of Spain as Carlos III. On four different occasions Luis wrote to Carlos III to apply for the position of court painter, but he never received a single commission from the king. His still life paintings drew the attention of Prince Carlos, who was interested in natural history.

Luis undertook a series forty-four oil paintings of Spanish food—bread, ham, melons, tomatoes, and lemons displayed in baskets, water jugs, silver platters, and chipped pottery—for the prince’s palaces. As he lay dying in June of 1780, Luis Meléndez declared bankruptcy. His story teaches us two things: when life hands you lemons, paint them, and there are politics in everything. [End Page 89] Still Life and Politics Israeli artist Ori Gersht (1967) creates a still life in a darkened window using the cabbage, melon, and cucumber of Juan Sánchez Cotán’s 17th century painting substituting a pomegranate for the quince. Then he videotapes his installation as a high caliber bullet explodes the pomegranate. Red juicy seeds fly through the air. Though the painter may hope to grant the fruit eternal life through his canvases, Gersht explodes that idea. But of course a pomegranate is also a granada, a grenade. Fruit in markets could explode at any time.

Vanitas All is vanity or, as Julio Cortázar wrote in his Instructions on How to Wind a Watch, “In the background is death.” The decaying leaf in Caravaggio’s basket of glistening grapes and the fallen petals in floral paintings allude to decay. But death is always in the foreground for painters like Edwaert Collier (1640-1707) who put skulls in his still life paintings. Skulls bedecked with pearls and other precious jewels portray the swift passage from life to death. - Isn’t that a woodworm eating the frame? -You can’t keep bugs out of still life. [End Page 90] Lois Baer Barr A Spanish professor at Lake Forest College, Lois Baer Barr has published books, articles, and reviews on Spanish and Latin American literature. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for fiction and poetry. Her chapbook, Biopoesis, won Poetica Magazine’s 2013 contest. A summer spent painting still lifes inspired this piece. Works cited Buchan, Jack and Jonathan Baker. Still Life. London: Hamlyn, 2001. Print. Caputo, Joseph.

“Still Life Explosions.” Smithsonian.com . The Smithsonian Institution. March 2009. Web. Hirschauer, Gretchen A. and Catherine A. Metzger, Luis Meléndez: Master of the Spanish Still Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Print. Jordan, William B. La imitación de la naturaleza: Los bodegones de Sánchez Cotán. Madrid: Museo del Prado, 1992. Print. López Moreno, María. “Regarding My Father, Antonio López.” Antonio López. Madrid: Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2011. 21–31. Print. Orozco Díaz, Emilio. El pintor Fray Juan Sánchez Cotán. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1993. Print. Rowell, Margit. Objects of Desire: The Modern Still Life. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1997. Print. Salzmann, Günter. “A Traditional Genre Rediscovered.” Ensemble Moderne: Das Moderne Stilleben/The Still Life in Modern Art.

Salzburg: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 1998. 16–23. Print. Ebert-Schifferer, Sybille. Still Life: A History. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999. Print. [End Page 91] Copyright © 2015 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents Ordinary Art | The Weekly Standard Master of the Spanish Still Life National Gallery of Art Jul 27, 2009 | By Maureen Mullarkey The Weekly Standard Sorry, you've reached the limit on the articles you can view. Luis Meléndez Master of the Spanish Still Life National Gallery of Art through August 23 Still life bloomed late among art historical categories. Depictions of prosaic objects have been with us since antiquity, but rarely for their own sake. They served votive purposes or figure compositions submissive to higher themes. Foodstuffs and tableware entered as props for a Last Supper, an edifying banquet, or some festal spread catered by the gods and laced with allegory.

Not until the 17th century could the naked facts of a herring, a wine bottle, and a scattering of onions be presented without apology. What we moderns take for granted as still life lacked even a term for itself until the mid-1600s when stilleven, a matter-of-fact descriptive, started showing up in Dutch inventories. It took another hundred years before the French coined nature morte, a chilly classifier. Spaniards settled upon the homely bodegón, a nod to edible things and the abiding primacy of the kitchen. Luis Meléndez (1715-1780), one of Spain's greatest still life painters, was the accidental practitioner of a genre just beginning to speak its name. His bodegones, not well known in the United States, are debuting in a traveling exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington. On view are 30 breathtaking transfigurations of the mundane, each one a tribute to the splendor of the overlooked. The artist's training began in his father's studio. The elder Meléndez, a distinguished painter in the household of Philip V, produced miniature portraits of the royal family for distribution as diplomatic gifts.

In addition, he designed illuminated certificates of nobility. (Then, as now, papers mattered.) These were as elaborate as full-sized oil paintings and often combined with religious imagery. Command of the human figure, the capstone of artistic training, was crucial. The younger Meléndez was among the first to enroll in Philip's fledgling royal academy. Expectations were high for the young artist admitted with the highest marks. His confidence declares itself in the masterful 1746 self-portrait that prefaces the exhibition. Painted in the year of his admittance to the inaugural class, it presents him as a self-possessed caballero. Elegantly dressed, he carries the attributes of a student: a chalk holder (still in use today) and a folio sheet bearing a virtuoso oil rendering of a chalk drawing of a male nude. This drawing-within-the-portrait restates his aptitude for the figure and affirms an equal facility for trompe l'oeil, still life's ancient traveling partner. His early prospects, intimately aligned with his father's, ran aground on missteps, personality clashes, and plain bad luck.

The biographical record, spotty as it is, tells of a proud, ambitious artist gifted in everything but the temperament for advancement within a centralized patronage system. His father, the academy's director of painting, seems to have been a prickly model. Both father and son were soon expelled from the institution, crippling young Meléndez's opportunities for the major figurative projects his talent promised. Unbowed, the artist reinvented himself as a still life painter. And what a stunning job he made of it. His singular mastery of a minor genre became the vehicle for his eventual breakthrough into court patronage under the prince of Asturias, later Charles IV. In 1771, the prince invited Meléndez to produce an encyclopedic collection of paintings of seasonal foods produced on Spanish soil--a natural history of agricultural Spain. Meléndez combined rigorous structural design, thematic wit, and a quiet yielding to the facts of a meal. For all their ecstatic detail and horticultural veracity, these works are more than close-range quotations from the world. They are also exquisite enactments of a compelling artistic conscience.

Melén- dez's orchestrations of kitchen produce, executed in loving fidelity to naturalist concerns, are woven with cues that lend resonance to verisimilitude. At a glance, Still Life with Game (c. 1770) is a straightforward tabletop piece. Two dead pigeons lie in front of the copper kettle that waits to braise them. But the turn of their bodies, entwined with unnatural delicacy, telegraphs extra-culinary intention. The downy head of one bird rests sweetly, as if in caress, within the soft hollow of its companion's upturned neck. The staging suggests a tragic couple. (Melén- dez's audience would have known the legendary doomed lovers of Teruel, Spain's own Tristan and Iseult.) To emphasize the poignance, two spice packets lie chastely side by side in the foreground, each twisted at the ends to suggest heads and feet. Or tail feathers. One lifeless pairing echoes another. On one level, Still Life with Fish, Bread, and a Knife (c. 1772) is a plainspoken inventory of the ingredients for a meatless Lenten meal.

But in the land of Cervantes, luxuriantly devoted to soldiering, the position of that shining sea bream insinuates a fallen guerrero. Propped improbably on its tail, atop a knife and slumped against an overturned soup pot, the fish--mailed in lustrous scales--impersonates a wounded knight. The knife handle is visible on the fish's left; the blade shows on the right, a charade of impalement. A pink fin, dark red in shadow, mimics a bloody gash. The ensemble is a teasing blend of cultural emblem with genuine feeling for the thing-in-itself. The vanitas theme threads through the exhibition just as it does through the history of still life. Meléndez's work is a theater of delight in organic form--that heart-stopping cauliflower! a bliss of figs!--but the shadow of memento mori passes over it nonetheless. References to mortality peek from behind the veil of natural description. What is that shattered watermelon, glistening red flesh spilling onto the ground of a darkling landscape, if not an intimation of death on the run? Elsewhere, decay is not far off in bruised, overripe apples and pears.

The pity of maturation. Sly tension between depiction and suggestion exists in several end-of-dinner motifs that include narrow boxes of sweets. Pictorially, these rectangular forms register lighting effects and provide counterpoint to rounded volumes. They also function metaphorically: Made of rough scrap wood, they resemble stacks of coffins. Visible at the corner of one is a bit of wrapper. A hint of winding cloth? Instead of the customary skull, worm, or hourglass, Meléndez features--in miniature--the plain pine box that beckons us all. Viewed from the narrow angle of our own era, Luis Meléndez exhibits certain pictorial concerns similar to modernist ones. Here are those spatial ambiguities that our own eyes are conditioned to admire. (Is there really room for that bulk on such a narrow shelf?) Eager to show Meléndez in a modern light, the exhibition catalogue flourishes a Morandi still life for comparison. Yet it is precisely Meléndez's distance from modernity that is arresting. His sensibility thrived on the continuity of cultural memory. He worked, as did his contemporaries, in anticipation of discernible meaning and trustful of its reception.

His produce medleys are loyal to the seasons; and his unifying theme of the four elements (earth, air, fire, water) assumes an audience whose cultural field extended back, however fitfully, to Empedocles. Meléndez's repertory of enduring forms--the spoon, jar, bowl, and beaker, together with pantry stuffs--is still with us, triumphant over generational time. In the rhythms and transmitted rituals of meal preparation lies the divide between brute existence and civilized life. So much depends on fresh cauliflower and a loaf of bread. Maureen Mullarkey writes about art for the New Criterion and other publications. Web Link: 1000+ images about Still life/Naturaleza muerta, bodegón. on Pinterest | Christ, Artworks and Oxfords Pinterest • The world’s catalog of ideas Still life/Naturaleza muerta, bodegón. Desde hace muchos años me entusiasma el género pictórico del bodegón. Sus contenidos son tan variados, que todo cabe en él: flores, animales, frutas, verduras, cacharros de cerámica, vasos, botellas...

57 Pins130 Followers Who was the first woman to win an Academy Award Janet Gaynor - IT - 402 View Full Document Who was the first woman to win an Academy Award Janet Gaynor 1929 96 Where do they speak Malagasy Madagascar 97 What is a mud puppy American Salamander 98 You can ski on the piste but what other sport uses the term Fencing where the fight happens 99 Name Clint Eastwoods first film made in 1955 Francis in the Navy (1955) 100 What is the main flavouring in a Greek Tzataili sauce Garlic Page 127 This preview has intentionally blurred sections. Sign up to view the full version.

View Full Document 10000 general knowledge questions and answers No Questions Quiz 64 Answers 1 What links Dr Spock Errol Flynn and Emperor Nero Olympics Rowing Boxing Chariot 2 In what series of books did The Empress of Blandings appear Jeeves and Wooster a pig 3 What colour is iridium Steel Grey 4 Who founded ASH ( Action on Smoking and Health ) in 1971 Royal College of Physicians 5 What organisation opposes ASH FOREST 6 Who was the 1958 Cha-Cha champion of Hong Kong Bruce Lee 7 Who directed the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia David Lean 8 In mythology Romulus Remus suckled by a shewolf fed by what Woodpecker 9 In Gustav Holsts Planets suite what planet is missing Pluto not known then 10 If you went on the road to Mandalay what country are you in Miramar or Burma 11 Which cathedral has 4440 statues Milan 12 Tarom Airlines is the national carrier of which country Romania 13 What does an armadillo taste like Pork 14 In what French district do most of the best clarets come

 from Medoc 15 What was the first complete symphony to be recorded Beethoven's fifth 16 Thomas Minton at Stoke on Trent created what in 1789 The Willow Pattern 17 What European nation was the first to drink tea The Dutch 18 What's the worlds longest rail journey made no train change Moscow Peking 19 What was first built in the Place de Greve in 1792 The Guillotine 20 In what book does Humpty Dumpty first appear Through the looking Glass 21 Who was called The Man of Destiny Napoleon Bonaparte 22 19-19-19 who's vital statistics Olive Oyl 23 Name both families in Soap Tates Campbells 24 Where would you find a gemshorn On an Organ 25 The flower convallaria is better known as what Lily of the Valley 26 In what stage show does Frank N Furter appear The Rocky Horror Picture Show 27 Who invented the rocking chair Benjamin Franklin 28 Gerald Thomas directed what series of films Carry on Films 29 What did composer Berlioz originally study Medicine 30 Ocean is NOT recognised International Hydrographic Bureau Antarctic Ocean 3

1 In the Saint series of books what is Inspector Teal's full name Claude Eustace Teal 32 What is the most common Spanish surname Garcia 33 Pirates of Penzance 34 Aconite the poison is obtained from what plant Wolf's-bane 35 What culture introduced hats and crackers at Xmas season Ancient Rome 36 Chang 1st Wang 2nd what third most common Chinese name Li 37 What word is derived from the Arabic mawsim meaning season Monsoon 38 What's the other name for the statue of Egyptian god Harmachis The Sphinx 39 The French call it nature morte the Spanish bodegon what is it Still Life painting 40 This is the end of the preview.

Sign up to access the rest of the document. TERM Kenyatta University IT 402 - Spring 2015 1 2 3 4 5 Sampling In Research What is research? According Webster (1985), to researc HYPO.docx 1000+ images about El BODEGÓN en la pintura y fotografia on Pinterest | Kevin o'leary, Still life photography and Renaissance paintings Pinterest • The world’s catalog of ideas El BODEGÓN en la pintura y fotografia Un bodegón, también conocido como naturaleza muerta, es una obra de arte (animales, frutas, flores, comida, plantas, rocas o conchas) o hechos por el hombre (utensilios de cocina, de mesa o de casa, antigüedades, libros, joyas, monedas, pipas, etc.) en un espacio determinado. Los bodegones ya adornaban el interior de las tumbas del Antiguo Egipto .

En pinturas murales de la Antigua Roma y en mosaicos en Pompeya, Herculano y la Villa Boscoreale, incluyendo el motivo posteriormente 170 Pins1.19k Followers Maureen Mullarkey. Luis Meléndez; Spanish still life, National Gallery of Art Accidental Master of the Commonplace Luis Meléndez’s still lifes at the National Gallery By Maureen Mullarkey STILL LIFE BLOOMED LATE AMONG ART HISTORICAL CATEGORIES. Depictions of prosaic objects have been with us since antiquity but rarely for their own sake. They served votive purposes or figure compositions submissive to higher themes. Food stuffs and tableware entered as props for a Last Supper, an edifying banquet, or some festal spread catered by the gods and laced with allegory. Not until the seventeenth century could the naked facts of a herring, a wine bottle and a scatter of onions be presented without apology.

Luis Meléndez, Self Portrait, 1747 What we moderns take for granted as still life lacked even a term for itself until the mid-1600s when stilleven, a matter-of-fact descriptive, started showing up in Dutch inventories. It took another hundred years before the French coined nature morte, a chilly classifier. Spaniards settled upon the homely bodegón, a nod to edible things and the abiding primacy of the kitchen. Luis Meléndez (1715-1780), one of Spain’s greatest still life painters, was the accidental practitioner of a genre just beginning to speak its name. His bodegones, not well known in the United States, are debuting in a traveling exhibition that has begun at the National Gallery of Art. On view are some 31 breathtaking transfigurations of the mundane, each one a tribute to the splendor of the overlooked. Luis’s training began in his father’s studio. The elder Meléndez, a distinguished painter in the household of Philip V, produced miniature portraits of the royal family for distribution as diplomatic gifts. In addition, he designed illuminated certificates of nobility.

(Then, as now, papers mattered.) These were as elaborate as full-sized oil paintings and often combined with religious imagery. Command of the human figure, the capstone of artistic training, was crucial. Luis was among the first to enroll in Philip’s fledgling royal academy. Expectations were high for the young artist admitted with the highest marks. Luis’ confidence declares itself in the masterful 1746 self-portrait that prefaces the exhibition. Painted in the year of his admittance to the inaugural class, it presents him as a self-possessed caballero. Elegantly dressed, he carries the attributes of a student: a chalk holder (still in use today) and a folio sheet bearing a virtuoso oil rendering of a chalk drawing of a male nude. This drawing-within-the-portrait restates his aptitude for the figure and affirms an equal facility for trompe l’oeil, still life’s ancient traveling partner. His early prospects, intimately aligned with his father’s, ran aground on missteps, personality clashes, and plain bad luck.

The biographical record, spotty as it is, tells of a proud, ambitious artist gifted in everything but the temperament for advancement within a centralized patronage system. His father, the academy’s director of painting, seems to have been a prickly model. Both father and son were soon expelled from the institution, crippling young Meléndez’s opportunities for the major figurative projects his talent promised. Unbowed, the artist reinvented himself as a still life painter. And what a stunning job he made of it. His singular mastery of a minor genre became the vehicle for his eventual breakthrough into court patronage under the Prince of Asturias, later Charles IV. In 1770, the prince invited Meléndez to produce an encyclopedic collection of paintings of seasonal foods produced on Spanish soil — a natural history of agricultural Spain. Meléndez combined rigorous structural design, thematic wit, and a quiet yielding to the facts of a meal. For all their ecstatic detail and horticultural veracity, these works are more than close-range quotations from the world. They are also exquisite enactments of a compelling artistic conscience.

Meléndez’s orchestrations of kitchen produce, executed in loving fidelity to naturalist concerns, are woven with cues that lend resonance to verisimilitude. At quick glance, Still Life with Game (c. 1770) is a straightforward tabletop piece. Two dead pigeons lie in front of the copper kettle that waits to braise them. But the turn of their bodies, entwined with unnatural delicacy, telegraphs extra-culinary intention. The downy head of one bird rests sweetly, as if in caress, within the soft hollow of its companion’s upturned neck. The staging suggests the death embrace of a tragic couple. (Meléndez’s audience would have known the legendary doomed lovers of Teruel, Spain’s own Tristan and Iseult.) To emphasize the poignance, two spice packets lie chastely side by side in the foreground, each twisted at the ends to suggest heads and feet. Or tail feathers. One lifeless pairing echoes another. Luis Melendez, Still Life with Figs and Bread, c. 1760s On one level, Still Life with Fish, Bread, and a Knife (c.

1772) is a plainspoken inventory of the ingredients for a meatless Lenten meal. But in the land of Cervantes, luxuriantly devoted to soldiering, the position of that shining sea bream insinuates a fallen guerrero. Propped improbably on its tail, atop a knife and slumped against an overturned soup pot, the fish — mailed in lustrous scales — impersonates a wounded knight. The knife handle is visible on the fish’s left; the blade shows on the right, a charade of impalement. A pink fin, dark red in shadow, mimics a bloody gash. The ensemble is a teasing blend of cultural emblem with genuine feeling for the thing-in-itself. The vanitas theme threads through the exhibition just as it does through the history of still life. Meléndez’s work is a theater of delight in organic form — that heart-stopping cauliflower! a bliss of figs — but the shadow of memento mori passes over it nonetheless. References to mortality peek from behind the veil of natural description.

What is that shattered watermelon, glistening red flesh spilling onto the ground of a darkling landscape, if not an intimation of death on the run? Elsewhere, decay is not far off in bruised, overripe apples and pears. The pity of maturation. Sly tension between depiction and suggestion exists in several end-of-dinner motifs that include narrow boxes of sweets. Pictorially, these rectangular forms register lighting effects and provide counterpoint to rounded volumes. They also function metaphorically. Made of rough scrap wood, they resemble stacks of coffins. Visible at the corner of one is a bit of wrapper. A hint of winding cloth? Instead of the customary skull, worm, or hourglass, Meléndez features — in miniature — the plain pine box that beckons us all. Viewed from the narrow angle of our own era, Meléndez exhibits certain pictorial concerns similar to modernist ones. Here are those spatial ambiguities that our own eyes are conditioned to admire. [Is there really room for that much bulk on such a narrow shelf?] Eager to show Meléndez in a modern light, the exhibition catalogue flourishes a Morandi still life for comparison.

Yet it is precisely Meléndez’s distance from modernity that is so arresting. His sensibility thrived on the continuity of cultural memory. He worked, as did his contemporaries, in anticipation of discernible meaning and trustful of its reception. His produce medleys are loyal to the seasons; and his unifying theme of the four elements (earth, air, fire, water) assumes an audience whose cultural field extended back, however fitfully, to Empedocles. Meléndez’s repertory of enduring forms — the spoon, jar, bowl, and beaker, together with pantry stuffs — are still with us, triumphant over generational time. In the rhythms and transmitted rituals of meal preparation lies the divide between brute existence and civilized life. So much depends on fresh cauliflower and a loaf of bread. Exhibition continues to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 27, 2009 - January 3, 2010, and to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, February 1 - May 8, 2010. This essay appeared first in The Weekly Standard , July 17, 2009.

Copyright 2009, Maureen Mullarkey Naturaleza muerta / bodegón | WordReference Forums Naturaleza muerta / bodegón France, French Hola, bonjour ! ¿ Existe una diferencia de sentido entre Naturaleza muerta y Bodegón ? No encuentro ninguna al "browsing" la tela... Aquí está el contexto : Además de la temática religiosa, se desarrollan otros géneros, como el retrato, la naturaleza muerta y el bodegón. Lo que pensaba traducir así : À la thématique religieuse s'ajoutent d'autres genres, tel le portrait et la nature morte. Gracias por la ayuda, Mira les definiciones en el CNRTL : Bodegón. 3. m. Composición pictórica que presenta en primer plano alimentos o flores, junto con útiles diversos. Naturaleza muerta. 1. f. Pint. Cuadro que representa animales muertos o cosas inanimadas. France, French Gracias Ipfr, Si, ya habia encontrado definiciones para las dos palabras ! Solo que no sé si existen también dos palabras en francés.

Sólo conozco la de "nature morte". También es necesario traducir bodegón por "nature morte" ? En francés solo conozco "nature morte", pero no soy especialista. Buenos días, bonjour, Le Larousse en ligne a un article intéressant sur le sujet. En Espagne, on attribue actuellement au mot bodegón (" nature morte ") un sens général qui se rapproche de celui qui est donné à la nature morte française, [...] À l'origine, le terme désignait uniquement les tableaux représentant la cuisine ou les aliments : gibier mort, poissons, gâteaux, accompagnés de vaisselle et parfois de personnages tels que marchands et cuisiniers. Click to expand... Mais pas de traduction différenciée. Au revoir, hasta luego

Question: The French call it nature morte the Spanish bodegon what is it?
Answer: Still Life painting